When a photograph is being composed through the viewfinder, the photographer is putting a frame around a very small section of the world. However, when viewing photographs, we often look through them as if they are worlds in and of themselves.
(Dean Knessmann 2014:177)
Albert Camus observed that ‘true knowledge is impossible. Solely appearances can be enumerated, and the climate make itself felt’ (2005:10) As a photographer it is atmospheric conditions and not the truth we share. Understanding that a photograph gives us the opportunity to express our thoughts, views and impressions of and on life, truth and reality with only verisimilitude would be a good place to start an unadulterated photographic endeavour – We may never objectively know truth or reality beyond our own perceptions, but we can perhaps find security in the sharing of our subjective and absurd worlds.
A photograph is confined to communicating only the perceived realities imbued in the abstraction of actuality found on its surface. Viewers of a photographic work are therfore directed by the presented images towards impressions of truths, and not actual truths. This is a far cry from implied certitude of fact so often attributed to the medium. The invention and development of photographic science is clearly documented (Newhall, 1982: 4-58), but how it can be seen to communicate a feeling is a metaphysical problem and one I would like to explore further.
Following Hume and Kracauer, the art critic and writer Andy Grundberg, in his essay The Crisis of the Real, reminds us that ‘our perceptions only tell us about what our perceptions are, not about the true conditions of the world’ (1999:5). Thereafter the reality of existence each one of us experiences is unique. So, to investigate and reflect on a chosen cause, idea or feeling, and since all photography, however intentioned, represents a reflective practice that searches for objectivity in a world of subjective interpretations (Menon, Sinha & Sreekantan, 2014:172). Using photography as a tool of understanding or inclusivity necessitates a phenomenological approach that is appreciative of these hermeneutical issues. As the photographer cannot be removed from the act of picture taking, it is possibly the only fitting approach (not withstanding hermeneutics).
Photographic images play a powerful role in our perception of reality; they are also part of our reality acting as phenomena in themselves, they simultaneously define and evidence our perception of reality. Nevertheless, photography has a tender underbelly, its vulnerability is that the power of images is widely underestimated and misunderstood, thus leaving their role in society as an easily manipulated and highly effective governing apparatus. The image as proof is now the antithesis to the scientific method; in the wrong hands it has the power to undercut the fundamentals of existence, truth and reality that the academic and scientific community is striving to prove. The photograph has become a dangerous battleground of reality.
After the acceptance of the inherent phenomenological nature of photography and following the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002) – who proposed the human form should be understood not just as a biological soma, but as the body which centres one’s position and experience within the world – it is possible to create, what he might describe as a photographic Capta. Whereby individual photographs become visualised, interpretations of an individual’s conscious experience. A curated collection of deliberately Captic photographs can then be considered a phenomenological investigation; a transcendental ‘study of essences’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2002:vii) that can be used as a supplement towards our understanding of the nature of things. Consequently, rather than overtly describing a subject, work of this type is employed as a visually pensive approach which moves the viewer towards an understanding about the character of a given subject. Or, I should say, at least attempts to communicate that comprehension: We will have created a set of pictures that defines the photographer’s reality as they perceive it for others to interpret.
Here I am reminded that Robert Adams (1996:24), who has written that ‘the job of the photographer… is not to catalogue indisputable fact but to try to be coherent about intuition and hope’. I wish to embrace this mediation in my work by further remembering that there is no absolute truth in an image and that photography is as highly contingent as the concept of reality itself is. And in lieu of the possibility of introducing a control into my photographic practice; there is a seemingly infinite number of obstacles between what a photograph perceives as real, what a viewer thinks the photographer perceives as real, what the viewer perceives as real and if possible, what is actually real; and this is if anything is real at all.